A few more tidbits, shoutouts, and callouts from the WorldCon festivities in Anaheim:
- I was really hoping Tobias Buckell would turn out to be an asshole, considering that he’s smart, talented, funny, and successful. But alas, my hopes were thwarted, and he happens to be a great guy.
- I proved conclusively that I am The World’s Worst Pool Player™ while chatting up Sean Williams, Garth Nix, Madeleine Robins, and two other people whose names were wiped out by the combination of a martini and a Newcastle.
- Short story writer and Clarion graduate Eugene Myers and I shared a nice long hallway chat about the SF business somewhere in the labyrinthine party floor sometime well after midnight.
- Lou Anders’ old friend Stephenson is just a cool dude, and he had very nice things to say about Infoquake as well. Now if I could only remember his last name…
- Ian McDonald is a really nice guy, both drunk and sober. (He said of my horrific panel performance on his LiveJournal that I “hilariously undersold” my book. Isn’t that nice?) And if he doesn’t win the Hugo for one of his next few books, we have officially slipped into the Bizarro dimension.
- I kicked back with my fellow DeepGenre author Kevin Andrew Murphy a couple times and got to hear much of his wisdom on the SF biz and SF fandom.
- I saw fellow Johns Hopkins alumnus Edward Einhorn for the first time in a dozen years. He was signing his books from Hungry Tiger Press, Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz. I bought a copy of Paradox and, though I can’t speak to its contents yet, I can say that the packaging and the artwork by Eric Shanower are gloriously faithful to the spirit of the original W.W. Denslow illustrations.
- Craig Newmark (yes, that Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List) stopped by the Pyr group signing at Borderlands Books and said he was “very interested” in Infoquake and “following it closely.” (Oh yeah, and he raved about Ian’s River of Gods too.)
- Fellow Pyr author Fiona Avery turned out to be charming, erudite, and, as that fellow who was lamely attempting to pick up on her right in front of her fiancé noted, quite beautiful.
- The folks at Borderlands Books (including Alan Beatts and Jude Feldman) were conspicuously terrific, and their booth was extremely well-organized and well-stocked.
- David Barr Kirtley introduced me to a nice group of folks at the podcasting party, including, I believe, Stephen Eley of Escape Pod. (I say “I believe” because I don’t exactly remember the names of the folks I met, but Stephen’s card turned up in my bag post-convention.)
- I didn’t see nearly as much of John Scalzi this con as I did at ReaderCon, but then again, he’s now a Campbell Award winner (and tiara wearer) and was pretty much the center of attention the whole weekend.
- I never actually procured an introduction to SF legend (and fellow Pyr author) Mike Resnick, but I did attend his reading (complete with belly dancing) and sit alongside him at the Pyr panel.
- Other folks I managed to procur
briefintroductions to include Brandon Sanderson (whose website is marvelously dense), Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing fame), Josh Conviser (author of Echelon), Elizabeth Bear (whose Hammered I purchased at the con), Sherwood Smith (famed author and co-DeepGenrer), Jetse de Vries (of Interzone magazine), Campbell Award winner Jay Lake, and the guys from Britain’s Solaris Books.
I would point you to the Flickr feed of all the photos I took at WorldCon, but the batteries on my camera died the morning I arrived, and it never even occurred to me once to replace them. Duh.
Oh yeah, and I was very pleased that Spin won the Hugo for Best Novel. Not to take anything away from the other nominees, but I felt Spin was the best of the lot. (Though I will sheepishly confess to not having read the Ken Macleod. Yet.) For more of my thoughts in depth, read my review of Spin.